D1 Grand Prix

Features
By Mikel Reparaz
published

[PS2] We take this drift-heavy racer for a spin - literally

While it's a deeply technical game, D1 Grand Prix is far from bland. The car-customization options are fairly deep, and the competitive races are loaded with explosive pre- and post-match visuals that look like they were borrowed from WWE SmackDown! And if you get bored with the racing, "X-Treme" challenges - which involve everything from drifting to launching your car off a ramp - and unlockable movies of actual drift events should keep you busy for a while. So while it's unforgiving, race fans with a tolerance for steep learning curves might want to check this out next month.

  1. The shift-light tells you when to change gears or pop the clutch, if you like driving manually
  2. This bar here shows the balance between your score and your opponent's
  3. This is what happens to your score when you bump into an opponent
  4. This meter shows how "hot" your drift is. Right now it's ice cold
  5. On the plus side, you can rip off your opponent's bumper if you don't like having points
  6. Your bumper flies off if you hit anything. No. Bad. Never do this
  7. This car shows your tilt. It also lights up, which is meaningless but looks cool
Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.
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